Copyright by Linda Marie Mayhew 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Linda Marie Mayhew certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Eccentric Cities: Nikolai Gogol’s Saint Petersburg and Jan Neruda’s Prague Committee: ___________________________ Hana Pichova, Supervisor ___________________________ John Kolsti ___________________________ Keith Livers ___________________________ Sidney Monas ___________________________ Elizabeth Richmond-Garza Eccentric Cities: Nikolai Gogol’s Saint Petersburg and Jan Neruda’s Prague by Linda Marie Mayhew, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2005 Acknowledgments I would like to express my deep gratitude to all my committee members for guiding me through the dissertation process. Particular thanks go to my supervisor, Hana Pichova, for inspiring me to do my best work and encouraging me through every step. Sidney Monas always made himself available to discuss Gogol and Petersburg. John Kolsti suggested the themes for my third and fourth chapters. Reminders to address larger as well as smaller questions came from Keith Livers. Elizabeth Richmond-Garza challenged me to refine my theoretical approach over the course of many conversations. The Graduate School at The University of Texas at Austin provided me with a Continuing Tuition Grant during the 2004-2005, enabling me to focus the majority of my time on researching and writing my dissertation. Last but not least, special thanks to my husband, who believed in me, debated with me, provided extensive technological assistance, and cleaned more than his share of the house on many weekends to ensure the timely completion of this project. iv Eccentric Cities: Nikolai Gogol’s Saint Petersburg and Jan Neruda’s Prague Publication No. _________ Linda Marie Mayhew, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisor: Hana Pichova In Universe of the Mind, Yuri Lotman proposes that some cities are “eccentric”. These eccentric cities do not clearly correspond to the nation in which they are located because of discrepancies in architecture, geography, or politics, thus pushing them to the edge or beyond a country’s identity. The cities of Saint Petersburg and Prague represent two examples of cities existing beyond the boundaries of their respective cultures in the nineteenth century. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire and “Window to the West”, represented a focus on foreign rather than native culture. Similar tensions between internal and external cultures plagued Prague, the capital of an imagined Czech nation, governed by the Austrian Empire and dominated by German language and art v forms. This dissertation explores the ways in which these two eccentrically located urban spaces express the tensions between Western and Eastern Europe that arise from their geographical positioning and historical development as depicted in Nikolai Gogol’s Petersburg Tales (1833-1842) and Jan Neruda’s Prague Tales (1867-1878). These short story collections reflect the complex cultural geography of Petersburg and Prague and the complications of daily living caused by each city’s particular eccentricity. In Chapters One and Two, I explore the dualities of cultural and physical space in Petersburg and Prague as portrayed in Gogol’s Petersburg Tales and Neruda’s Prague Tales. Based on a binary system of interior and exterior, I examine the physical and semiotic space within the city, contrasting characters’ homes with streets and workplaces. In order to connect Gogol’s and Neruda’s portrayals of these cities to the actual physical space in the city, I explore architectural trends relevant to their writing. In Chapters Three and Four, I expand the binary structure of interior and exterior space into a larger context of native and foreign, as I compare Gogol’s and Neruda’s portrayal of Petersburg and Prague to their short stories and essays on Western European cities. The contrast between Western and Eastern European cities reveals how the author’s utilize themes of natural and artificial cities, belonging and alienation, and spiritual fulfillment to define cities and differentiate them from each other. vi Table of Contents Introduction Eccentric Origins…..…………………………………………………………………...…1 Chapter One……………………………………………………………………………...18 A Robing of Emptiness: Interior and Exterior Space in Gogol’s Петербургские повести Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………….……..51 Caught in the Middle: Interior and Exterior Space in Neruda’s Povídky malostranské Chapter Three………………………………………………………………………….....75 Creation and Alienation: Gogol’s “Рим” from the Perspective of Петербургские повести Chapter Four……………………………………………………………………………109 Revolution and Ritual: Neruda’s Pařížské obrázky and Povídky malostranské Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...138 Eccentric Perspectives Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………143 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………...148 vii List of Maps St. Petersburg, 1993……………………………………………………………………...17 Prague, 1858……………………………………………………………………………..50 Rome, 1800………………………………………………………………………………74 Paris, 1871………………………………………………………………………………108 viii Introduction Eccentric Origins In the Moscow apartment where I lived in the Fall of 1998, I regularly overheard my next door neighbor attempting to wake his mother each morning. Their borderline hostile conversation passed through the walls from their apartment to my kitchen. “Mother, get up!” he insisted. “It’s not time yet,” she barked. “It’s already nine o’clock.” “No, it’s three minutes till nine. You can wake me up at nine o’clock, and not one minute earlier!” she shrieked. Not once did I see the son or his mother in person. If I ever did, I would have ducked my head and scurried into my own apartment. Although I felt somehow acquainted with them through overheard conversations like this one, my knowledge of their personal life embarrassed me. At the same time, I dreaded which aspects of my own private life the sound carrying cement walls had conveyed to these neighbors. Inspired by my overseas experiences, I initially conceived of this project as an examination of public and private spaces. The process of researching and refining ideas led me to the boundaries of public and private space within the urban contexts of nineteenth century Czech and Russian literature. I decided to juxtapose the short story collections of two writers from the mid-1800s, Nikolai Gogol’s Петербургские повести and then Jan Neruda’s Povídky malostranské, for their common focus on urban space 1 and the humor and pathos in daily life. My preliminary research on urban space led me to Yuri Lotman’s Universe of the Mind and his notion of eccentric cities. His theories of eccentricity and semiotic space provided a base to connect the texts by two different writers, on two different cities. The theory of eccentricity binds together these short stories and authors, as I explore the defining qualities of St. Petersburg and Prague as eccentric cities. Lotman’s discussion of eccentric cities in Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture hinges upon the concept of the semiosphere. He defines the semiosphere, as “the whole semiotic space of the culture in question”. The boundary surrounding this space defines a given area; while the diverse elements behind the border become linked together simply by virtue of existing within the same semiosphere. The border also separates those elements from the surrounding space, further defining them. Therefore, the limits of the border clearly specify the binary oppositions of interior and exterior and a culture’s sense of ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ or ‘self’ and ‘other’. As a factor that both divides and unites, the boundary is ambivalent belonging to both interior and exterior frontiers, controlling and adapting the external into the internal, thus creating a particularly dynamic area. The semiosphere represents the entire space of a city and may be applied to a variety of binary structures in urban space, such as homes and streets, with windows or doorways differentiating between them. On a larger scale, the semiosphere represents an entire empire, redefining the limits of the nation before and after conquests and wars. In this larger context of empire, cities bear particular symbolic significance. Throughout history, cities have been considered the physical center of a nation, regardless of their 2 geographical positioning, as well as the cultural nucleus, being representative of the surrounding area.1 Lotman suggests that there are two types of urban structures: concentric and eccentric. A concentric semiosphere, or traditional city, enforces its boundaries and remains separate from its surrounding territory. The traditional city space ideally embodies its country, often sitting upon a hill with the landscape radiating around it. The castle or primary fortress on the hilltop mediates between the lower land and the sky, symbolizing “at the same time an image of the heavenly city and a sacred place”.2 Not all cities symbolize the surrounding space or a sacred ideal in this manner, as they are “placed eccentrically to its earth, beyond its boundaries”.3 This eccentric positioning refers to how a city relates to a nation culturally, rather than geographically. As a result, these atypical cities maintain varying degrees of openness and have contact with other spaces and cultures. In other